


Entre chien et loup

by Amand_r



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 09:54:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Most assuredly not,</em> I agree.  And then, before I can help myself, <em>Have you ever taken someone by surprise in public?  For sex?</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Entre chien et loup

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carenejeans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carenejeans/gifts).



> Thanks to the betas, 51stcenturyfox and cparagraphs!

There's a pleasant shimmer to the air when the rain falls this lightly, as if the very substance of it has solidified and turned to water. Even taking shelter under a bridge or umbrella is pointless; the wetness is invasive. My coat has been lacquered with mist since the second I hit the street.

I have the brandy and the scallions. I have the baguettes in a plastic sack; hopefully they are faring better then the rest of me. When I cross under the bridge and see the barge rising from the event horizon like a happy monolith having a lie-in, I can't help but feel satisfaction and relief that I'm almost there.

And in the long history of aptness, that is when I feel the Presence. Just the sound of it, the feel of my temples tightening like they do when I clench my jaw is enough to take the wind out of me. It never seems to fail these days.

I could drop the bags, and that seems like the smart thing to do, but these days, it's a good chance that they'll be someone I know and like, and lately when we ditch something to grab swords around the other, the teasing is merciless. _Oooooh,_ they say, _did I scare you? Expecting someone?_ Sometimes there's jazz hands of mockery. I can do without all forms of jazz hands.

I am still under the bridge, so I pause, because the clearing on the other side is unpredictable. It's difficult to see clearly, and more than once something drastic has happened under this bridge. It could be him, it probably is him. It usually is.

It is. Hands shoved in pockets, curling around the corner as if he's been waiting there for me. Of course he has been.

 _Are you crazy?_ I ask, shouldering my undropped bags and taking refuge in that small measure of nonchalance.

He just shrugs. _It's raining,_ he says, as if that explains everything. His hair is dark and wet, plastered to his head. The jumper under the coat is most assuredly drenched. Scuffy trainers squeak on the cobblestones, more from the rubber than the bricks themselves.

 _You have to stop shocking people,_ I say. _One of these days it won't be me._ I drop into step beside him and finish the walk to the end of the tunnel. The barge is stalwart and silent over his shoulder. Oh, hullo there, dry place.

 _It will always be you,_ he says, stopping short of the tunnel end and grasping my shoulder. There is a gentle shove, and then I feel my back meet the wall. The imbalance makes me drop the bag with the baguettes.

 _You have bread,_ he murmurs. His face is so close, eyes so very near, and I can smell the aftershave he uses. His hair is longer than I have seen in a while, though to be fair it's been a few months.

 _Well..._ I begin to say, but then there doesn't seem to be a point to that, because his hands come up on either side of my head, palms to the wall, and his face is so close I can smell his breath—well, hear it. That I can't smell it, _per se,_ is rather nice. Anything else might not be appropriate. His chest sways closer, following his head, and then his legs, until I can tell this isn't a friendly hey-there-how-you-doing-my-chum greeting.

If he's waiting for me to say something, he's going to be disappointed. In times like this, I have learnt to just pause, because they can mean many things, but every millimeter closer he gets, the more my choices narrow. He waits, too, because he is nothing if not patient. He's the one with the plan, really.

 _I love your neck,_ he whispers, not the most flattering of choices for people like us, but I know what he means. I love his neck too. I've just never said it out loud.

I might have said something, but it is hard to tell. It's more a noise that was meant to be words, but is mistranslated in the loosing. I lean in, because obviously I can, eyes scanning his for something.

 _Not on the mouth,_ he says, turning his face to the side before sliding to his knees in front of me, hands two yards behind him, it seems, fingers scritching down my lapels to the front of the coat, pressing the buttons like a keypad, and then unclenching the fabric to devote themselves to the tidy activity of undoing my belt and trousers. My cock is pulsing—didn't take long for that to catch on to this, really--

 _Wait,_ I whisper, but what I might be trying to stop is happening anyway, and it—well, anyway--

 _Hmm,_ goes the noise over my cock, loosed into the cold and wet night air before he takes it in his mouth. His tongue finds the hood of foreskin and does _something_ to it. Jesus. He sucks so much of me into him mannish pride thinks for a flash that I'll see it poking out the back of his neck. But I can't look down, not yet. The stones of the tunnel are painted with the moving red of taillight reflections. The French don't seem to care about this sort of thing, but still, the middle of the street, however covered--

He draws off my cock and fists it, pulling the foreskin past the tip, then darts his tongue into it, fucking the hole he's made.

 _Where did you—_ I start, but it's pointless. His other hand shoves my hips against the wall, palm flat just above the base of my cock. When I hit the stone, he balls his hand into a fist and tugs on my pubic hair, turning his wrist, then lets go with one surprising tug and slides his head down my cock. His nose is almost to the base of my cock,and his tongue is doing something magical.

It would be prudent to grab his shoulders or that neck I love, to do something with my hands. Conduct music, mime, sign language perhaps. It seems rude to just let them hang, but they're offline. Sorry old boy, they say, can't talk now, fucking.

Being fucked, they amend, when one of his hands slides serpentine into my crotch and finds my balls.

It's very inappropriate that the only thing I can think of is that Joe would be amused by all this. If I ever tell him, he'll make the sad trombone noise with his A string.

I usually take pride in staying power, but I'm not perfect, and the suddenness of this just makes it even hotter, if that is possible. He sucks on the head when I come, and the telltale lack of spitting is ominous over the faraway revving of engines and the gentle lapping of the Seine on the sides of the riverbank.

 _Hrm,_ he says, not offering anything else. My eyes are still closed when he tucks my cock back into my trousers, gives it a pat through the cloth, and then does the flies. He might be humming. He might be laughing.

By the time I can see straight again, the tunnel is empty, my baguettes and brandy gone. I'm not about to chase after him.

***

The auctioneer is far too polite for an auctioneer. He sighs as if he is beset on all sides by ruffians, and when the lady next to me clips my ear with her paddle, I wonder if he isn't on to something.

The pickings are slim, and I don't even know why I’m there at this time of year, really. The artefacts are all Italian, and I don't give a shit about them these days. But Amanda has a line on something, and I’m to bid on it for her because, as she told me earlier, the auction house has her picture in their private hall of shame.

Unfortunately, to get to the wall hangings, I have to sit through fifteen shoddy violins, thirteen reliefs and about a billion pieces of pottery that I wouldn't use as a dog bowl. If I had a dog.

 _Lot four sixty-seven a handcrafted Venetian mirror from the late sixteenth century. Until recently hung in the private boudoir of the Marchesa di..._

It's an ugly mirror. I saw it earlier when I went inspecting. I have the special pass, laminated and everything, that gets me all over the place back there. But they wheel the thing out on the cart, all ten feet of it, and I wonder what the hell Amanda is going to do with a ten by five foot Venetian mirror that can't be worth more than four thousand euros. It has a shoddy pedigree, and someone has banged it up quite a bit, probably when stowing it against looters during any one of the wars. I'll wrangle it out of her eventually, though it might cost me a few bottles of wine.

I almost miss the bid, and I flip my paddle up, clipping the lady next to me. Turnabout is fair play, after all.

 _Five hundred, do I hear one thousand?_

The lady next to me flips her paddle up and clacks it against mine. Oh, it's on now.

 _One thousand, do I hear fifteen hundred?_

Of course he does. My paddle spins in my hand, like an overhand twist. My neighbor parries with two thousand.

I'm somewhere at thirteen-seven when I realize that this is boring as hell. The only satisfaction I'm getting is from delivering new ways to wave my paddle when I outbid the lady in what I think might be faux fox fur. The vulpine head on her shoulder glares at me accusingly. I smile at it and wave my paddle about like a champion ping-pong player.

 _Sold to the gentleman for forty-five hundred euros,_ the auctioneer concludes. That's that. Now I have to sit through a few more ugly relics of Italian debauchery and craftsmanship, then it's a bill of lading and a cheque. I should look at it just a little, to pretend that I care.

So when my vulpine row mate glares at me and stomps off to examine the fifteen baubles she's purchased, I saunter towards the back room, where the bigger pieces are. The auctioneer blinks at my laminated badge and hands me the paperwork before scurrying off to assist my new arch-nemesis.

I can never remember where Amanda's apartment is. Diderot? Dauphine? Something with a D? That's about seventy-five percent of all streets here. I amble through the rows, looking for the mirror. Ah, there it is. It's very hard to miss the gilded cherubs and the scratched facade towards the bottom. I wonder if the woman ever had sex in her room, with all those things staring at her.

I am in the middle of fudging the receipt when my head begins to pound and I bite the inside of my mouth enough that my eyes water. This is...not a good time. Lately has never been a good time.

If I don't turn around then he can't see my face, and that's for the best. I could see him in the mirror if I cared to look. _You turn up in all the fun places,_ I say to the sheet on the clipboard. What is Amanda's current surname? Cliquot? Montrose? Darieux? Jones?

There's a huffing sound and then that sensation one gets when the proximity alarm goes off. Humans seem to have a hyper-sensitivity to nearness, even if they don't know it right away; it's one of the things that confuses me about horror films. He's right behind me

 _It's early sixteenth century,_ he murmurs into my ear. _Nice. Mercury substrate._ A hand finds its way around my front, pressing at my stomach through the cloth of my shirt and trousers.

I can hear the distant voices of the auctioneer and several of the customers off in the small antiquities location. The workmen are three aisles over, packing up a hideous fountain; they had just started when I got there, and it will take them a good while yet.

 _It's a piece of junk,_ I tell him, clutching the clipboard in both hands.

 _Too true,_ he answers, and then his fingers go under the belt, over the shirt, to just rest inside the waistband of my trousers. He doesn't try to go any further, perhaps because he's afraid it would be hard to extricate himself if we are caught. Perhaps though, I think when he twists the elastic of my shorts on two fingers, drawing the cloth tight over my hardening cock, there might be another reason.

His front is plastered to my back, and I can feel him through my coat, through his trousers--a faint outline, but he's either quite happy to see me or he's found another way to carry his sword. A rather impractical one, at that. _Amanda will be happy,_ he says. _She knows better than to ask me._

The pressure on my cock is incredible, trapped in the taut shorts. In front of me, the mirror shows me everything—his face, his shoulders, my own cheeks turning red. His hand buried in my waistband. His other arm comes about my other side and wraps itself about my chest, over the clipboard, so that at least one of my hands is trapped. He sways me back to press as much of himself against me as he can without making us tumble over.

 _I guess they could find us,_ he whispers, and then grinds his cock against my arse. His hand finally leaves my waistband, but he takes the elastic of the shorts with him, hooking it over my belt buckle so that they won't snap back. Well now, that's not normal. My cock doesn't seem to mind.

 _You act like I haven't done this before,_ I say, because when you're looking right into the eyes of the man debauching you in public, a brave face is a great way to either egg him on or dissuade him from stopping. His eyebrows raise just a little, and he can't be surprised at what I've said.

Instead, he looks down at my trousers in the mirror, running his hand over my cock through the material. His cock is hard against me, and he does a halfhearted thrust, almost a grind, a rubbing,a taste of what could happen if we weren't here, in this public place in front of the ugliest Italian mirror in the universe. What we might do on sheets, or in the shower. What we might do could we strip off the trousers, jumpers, the socks and the coats. We could hang our heavy coats on hooks at the door and forget that they exist for a while.

I'm too busy thinking about the idea of naked bodies that I forget that we're in public. I'm not perfect, especially not when someone is running clipped but effective nails against the grain of the denim over my dick. I stagger forward into the mirror, finally dislodging my arms enough that I can brace myself on the frame. Both of his hands slide to my hips, and he humps me through the cloth. I'm not sure if this is a promise or an advertisement. A free sample, a _punition_ from the basket on the counter.

I don't know if he comes. I surely do, into my tightened shorts, the constriction on my balls starting to hurt. I brace myself on the mirror frame with his gentle rocking thrusts and close my eyes. If we're discovered, it'd be better to miss that initial look from our interrupter. And when he lets go of me, I have to hold on for a few more seconds, grinding my teeth. It feels as if there's something gravelly in my mouth, mixed with the blood of my cheek.

 _What is this?_ I whisper, one hand on the bottom of a chipped cherub.

The mirror rattles on the stand, and when I look into it, he's not there. I think something in my mouth is broken.

***

 _You shouldn't feel ashamed,_ the dentist says, handing me the plastic case. _Lots of men have to wear them now. The stress of the day comes out in the sleep._

I raise an eyebrow. If he only knew how long these teeth have been in this skull. Well, longer then most, shorter than some, surely. I take the little case of betrayal and tuck it into my pocket, mumble something encouraging, and leave the office. I need a drink.

Paris is busy. It's only four in the afternoon, but people are returning to work or leaving work, actually, and the streets are the mess they usually are any time after ten and before midnight. A row of _Clios_ are lined up like a series of clown cars, waiting for the light. Three kids with a hackey sack are wreaking havoc on one another on the corner. I flip my collar up against the wind that has replaced the rain.

No one is in the bar, big surprise. Joe waves his hand at me and tucks the phone between shoulder and chin so that he can reach behind him for a glass. I slide onto the stool and toss the plastic case on the counter. Staring at it mistrustfully.

 _Yeah, well, I could ask. Yeah,_ Joe says, pouring me a finger of scotch. I slip my coat off and toss it unceremoniously on the stool on my right. There's a _thunk-ka-thunk-ka-thunk_ , and my jaw tightens. My pulse pounds in my temple on one side. The plastic case on the counter says, I told you so.

 _Say,_ Joe says to me, _Amanda wants to know what the price was for that Venetian mirror._

I pick up the glass, wonder if I can't put the bite guard in the scotch, like mothers used to do with children's teething rings. _Five thousand. Euros._

Joe whistles and informs her. The squawking on the other end means that Amanda's been shortchanged. Joe holds the phone away from his ear and makes that face that looks like this on the internet: O_o. I shrug my shoulders. _Tell her it's a lovely fake. No, wait, don't._

Joe starts to say something, and then he changes his mind. _Sorry Amanda—krrrrzakt—you're-braaaaapkt--bar must be going through a tunnel--_ Then he hangs up and takes the handset off the receiver. _I ain't going anywhere near that,_ he tells me, pouring me another finger. He reaches for the remote control and the volume on the stereo goes up a few notches. Some man sings about having always been in love, always being in love, always will be in love or something else. Joe tilts his head and stares off into the distance. The fingers of his right hand twitch as he tries to work out the guitar chords he's hearing.

 _What is this shit?_ I ask, tossing five euros on the counter.

 _Francis Cabrel,_ Joe shoots back. _The ladies like it._

Lord save us all from Francis Cabrel, I think, and then I don't think anything else, because there it is, the pain in my jaw, the click-clicking of teeth when he comes in the door. It's not vanity on my part—I can see the door in the bar mirror.

It might be my imagination that every time I see him now he looks more smug.

Joe pours him a scotch, too, and he slides into the stool next to me on the other side.

 _Hey._

What do I say to that? My cock knows. He's programming me for something, maybe. I can't go within fifteen feet of the thought of him these days without thinking of mirrors and cobblestones and spit. I haven't called him or emailed him since the auction three days ago. I don't know what to say, which is probably what he wants.

 _Yeah,_ I say, and finish my drink. I have to piss, and that's as good an excuse as any to leave the room. Joe swipes the cash off the bar and tucks it into the register, and I wave two fingers at him.

The bar is slightly upscale, but the toilets are still standard dank painted stalls. The men's room consists of three urinals and a stall with a toilet, with a door that doesn't lock. Joe is always on the landlord to fix it up a bit, but the man usually shrugs and says, _minutement_. It's been a minute for a few years. But the paint is a year old, I know because I helped to coat it on, right after Richie had taken a fire hose to everything in the room and let it all dry out. Fun times at Le Blues Bar, gay Paris.

I don't like the urinals. I don't know why. I should be used to pissing anywhere, but when presented with the option of a closed stall, I'll take that every time. Now is especially important, because the presence follows me back to the head. It's a rare thing that I have never bothered to tell anyone, but sometimes, with special ones, you can gauge how close they are by the way your muscles twitch, by the sharpness of the pain in your head. Cruel was the god who decided that this was a form of natural selection.

When the door opens, the sound of Francis drifts in, _dan les moindres recoins de l'espace,_ for the opening, and then on the shutting, _dans les moindres rêve ou tu t'attardes--_

I look at the closed stall door. The feet stop just outside, pointing in. My hand is pressed against the flat wood, holding it shut.

 _I know you're in there,_ he says.

 _I know I'm in here, too,_ I say, dropping my hand and watching with some satisfaction as the door stays firmly shut. _Imagine that._

There's no other sound from the other side, but the shoes remain where they are. If the shoes are there, my deductive skill tells me that he is still there. I'm hiding in a toilet stall for no reason. I reach out to the top of the door and yank it open to find him standing there, arms crossed. Waiting. Patience of a horny saint, that one.

 _All right then,_ I say. _I saw this one coming._

 _Then it doesn't count,_ he replies, and before I can ask what we are counting up to, he is in the stall with me, hands on my shoulders, mouth is that smile. And one knee finds its way between my own.

Just like the first time, my back meets the wall, but now there are no coats between us. Just shirts, which seem so much flimsier when they are the only thing between flesh. My trousers feel tight, and I want to tell him something, but his body is almost plastered to me, chest to chest, his cheek brushing mine, so that I get a great view of his ear.

His fingers go to my waist, but I wave them away. _I'm a big boy,_ I whisper. If I cannot get our trousers open this time, then there must be something wrong with me. One hand works my belt, and one works his, and they slide from the buckles, hitting each other on the way out with a leather whip-crack. He is wearing trousers much looser than mine, so I have to prise my cock from the shorts, whereas his just seems to appear through magic.

I fist his cock and mine for a second, and he lets me, his mouth smiling into my neck. Everything in my hand feels fifty degrees hotter than it should be. I give it an experimental squeeze and the pressure expels all the air from my lungs.

 _No, not that way,_ he says, turning his back to me and pressing his partially bare arse against my front. The minute bit of skin my cock hits is enough to make it jump a little. His shoulders lower when he bends a little, one hand hooked over the top of the stall, the other thumbing down his shorts over his arse.

This is not what I had imagined, actually, and I have imagined it many times in the past few days. But here he is, fishing a small packet of lubricant from his loose trousers and handing it to me, as if he has planned this all along, which--

 _You are always prepared,_ I tell him, ripping the packet open with my teeth. The little that gets on my tongue tells me that we need to invest in better lube if we're going to do anything else after this sometime, because this isn't going to cut it. He sighs and rolls his hips a little while I slick my cock, and then folds more so that I can push myself into him. He makes a noise like a grunt, and that's pretty hot, actually, as if he's surprised, though he shouldn't be. I am the one who should be surprised, fucking him in the toilet stall in the middle of the afternoon, pulling his hips and holding them still so that I can draw out and slam into him again.

I wish we had a mirror. I would like to see his face, but all I can see is the side of his face as he lays his cheek against his arm, the way his lashes curl up from his closed lids. I cannot see his mouth, that mouth that started all this days ago in a dark tunnel.

I slow down, and he responds by tightening his arse around me, bucking his hips under a little. I give him a slap and yank a little too roughly for my tastes these days. _You came in here,_ I tell him when his hand uncurls from the top of the stall and smacks the wood in front of him. I yank him upright and press his chest into the wood, kissing the back of his neck. The first time my lips meet his skin, I realize that I've never tasted him before. Never set my lips on his mouth, on any part of him. And he's been _everywhere_. I brace him with one hand and reach down to his cock with my other.

He thrusts in my hand, but the angle is poor. I tug at his foreskin a little. _Uh-huh,_ I murmur. _I see how it is._

I don't know how long I can fuck him, how long I can last, pushing with these deep-shallow thrusts, squeezing his cock as hard as I can just to see if he will let me. He doesn't make much noise, maybe because of Joe outside, maybe because he's trying not to show that it hurts. Maybe he likes it. I open my mouth and just touch the tip of my tongue on the base of his neck—the vertebrae are right there under the skin, these white bones that I love, and which keep his head on his shoulders, his quickening in his body. These joints as fragile as a girl's set of pop beads.

He tastes like a person, really, any person. There's no romance in the way a person tastes, but in the way you interpret it. And he's sweat and salt and a little cologne, a little hair gel. Remains of fabric softener rubbed off from his short collar. Perfume, dew and lavender. That's poetry in a way, I guess.

 _Don't,_ he pants, _don't--_ and then he humps my fist, taking my cock with him. I come before he does, but when he does, it paints the wall, drips on my hand. I smear it on his hip, his trousers, the hair at the base of his cock and on his lower stomach, punching my cock into him a few more times for good measure.

He pushes against me suddenly, then, and we fall back to the other side of the stall. He's grabbing some loo roll and cleaning himself. I try to see his face, but it's out of sight, away from me. His eyes never look at my cock, or my face. Just his shorts, his belt buckle, then the fall of his jumper over his waistline.

I close my eyes and turn my head a bit. I need a bit of a rest, I think, but really, I want him to leave first, so I can camp out here until the world ends. The metal rattle of the loo roll spindle goes again, and he wads the paper on my cock as gently as he can. It's almost humiliating to be cleaned, and the only response is to pretend that I'm having an out-of-body experience.

The toilet flushes, and he tucks me back into my shorts and then in my denims—getting rather good at that, he is—buckling the belt one notch too loose. His breath is hot on my face, and I screw my eyes shut so that I don't ruin the surprise.

 _Don't forget this,_ he says, so close that I can feel his lips moving on my cheek, and he tucks the bite guard case into my shirt pocket, patting it through the cloth. Then the stall door shuts softly and I peel my back away from the stinking painted wood of the stall, resting my forehead against the other side instead. Francis gets louder when the door to the loo opens and then it closes and I am left panting and staring at the graffiti on the stall wall right under my nose.

 _POUR UNE BONNE DRAGUE, BANDEZ-VOUS À ADAM...01 55 97 55 55_

Indeed.

***

 _Take that thing out of your mouth,_ Amanda says over the phone, _I can't understand a word you're saying._ I'd forgotten it was in, and when I spit it out into the empty glass the feeling of relief in my teeth is palpable. The clear plastic is shiny with spit but also white where I've been chewing at it.

 _It's comfortable,_ I tell her. It's not something I had thought I would admit, but I'm getting old, and I remember when we used to tell many more jokes about shit than we do nowadays. So does Amanda. What's a little spit between friends? Probably a good time.

 _Sounds like you're under some stress,_ she says. _Do you need me to relieve it for you?_

I don't have an answer for that. _The mirror was a fake,_ I say instead. _I looked at it. You're lucky you got three for it before someone figured it out._

Amanda's nails click on the phone as she struggles with it, probably because she's buffing her many gems with one hand and counting her wads of cash with the other. _Someone like you? The person who bought it?_

Ooh, touche.

 _I have to go,_ Amanda tells me, _Michelle wants to use my telly to watch something about a human centipede, and I don't think I want to be here for that._

 _Most assuredly not,_ I agree. And then, before I can help myself, _Have you ever taken someone by surprise in public? For sex?_

 _You're asking me that,_ Amanda comments dryly.

 _No, no I'm not,_ I conclude. I lift one foot and stare at my toenails. They need to be trimmed. Beyond my foot I can see the sky out the window—it's still blue and bright.

 _Are you getting ideas?_ Amanda asks.

Not precisely, I don't tell her. I wonder if she'll show up somewhere to see me in a faux fox fur coat and nothing else, in the middle of an art gallery, or a fountain at the park. Not a particularly unsatisfactory idea, if it didn't already interfere with the...thing I am dealing with now.

 _I remember one time I told someone that the only way to get you was to corner you,_ Amanda says into the silence. _Did he listen?_

A siren erupts as an ambulance speeds down the street a little ways away. _I'm not sure,_ I say slowly. I'm not.

 _Well, that makes one of you,_ she chirps. _Ta._

It's regrettable that phones don't make that dial tone noise when someone hangs up anymore. I would have like to have listened to that for a while. It's restful to hear it, over and over and over until the line gets impatient with you and blurts out the error message like an alarm clock. Then you have to hang up and start over again, like a record needle going back to the beginning of the song.

Like surprising someone in a familiar tunnel. Or taking them in a familiar toilet. Using the dial tone to shock them to the beep beep beep.

I set my glass down, tuck in the bite guard, and unbutton my trousers, settling myself further into the sofa cushions. If he were here, he would finish his drink. He would talk to me as he roamed the room, and when my eyes were closed, or he was out of sight, he would start to peel his clothing away. His shirt would slide over his head in one tug. His jeans would fall down to the floor with a shimmy of his hips, and he'd use one finger to curl under the edge of his socks and yank them off into little balls that would skitter under the table.

He wouldn't be wearing any shorts, because he's been waiting for this. I would be talking about something boring, like Tetris or Plutarch. If he were here, he would slide over the back of the sofa on top of me before I could feel that he was there, and the shock of his nakedness on my hands would probably make me say something unflattering.

He would tug down the collar of my shirt to lick the skin there, and cover my mouth with his other hand, probably because I wouldn't be able to shut up, possibly because he still won't kiss me. He would let me settle my hands on his hot skin, travel the length of his back, maybe the swell of his arse. He might let me touch his hair. If he were here, he would reach between us, slipping his fingers under the waistband of my shorts like he's done before. He'd run his thumb over the head of my cock, breathe on the skin at my neck in rhythm to his movements.

He would want me to thrust my hips upward. He would let me stretch, toe off my socks, shrug out of my jumper, twist and turn on the cushions just because I like the feel of them on my bare skin. He would let me bury my face into the hair under his arms, just because I like the smell of it.

If he were here, I realize, squeezing the base of my cock, if he were here, he might ask me to do thing. He might wait for them to happen. I can't say. I bend my knees and dig my toes into the seam of the sofa cushions.

He wouldn't ask me, _Is this alright? Is this what you like?_ because he already knows.

Coming without him already feels like a wasted opportunity.

***

The train takes forever. I have a lot of practice in waiting, but still, every stop on the subway makes my time to think longer. Every time someone blocks the doors and they have to open again and wait until we are all smashed in here, that's another thirty seconds before I arrive.

It wouldn't be so bad if I had driven. Then I would have been thinking about the road, about that stupid old man in front of me, of that light over by Diderot that always seems to know when I am coming and turns red just before I get there. I would have had to tease life from the old windshield wipers, on their last legs and begging to be replaced. And I might have hit some pedestrian and been cooling my heels in jail instead of watching the same student get her backpack caught in the doors every time they try to close, every single stop.

Yes, yes, train stop and go. I almost miss my exit, but once I pull away from the crush of commuters and shoppers I can set myself on auto pilot for the rest of the way there. Once I heard someone complain that they would like to go to sleep the day after American Thanksgiving and wake up on the first of January, just so that they could avoid the bullshit. If I could sleepwalk here I most assuredly would. I should have taken a taxi. Why do I never think of taxis?

There's a light in the window, but even before I bother to check for a shadow in the housing I feel him on the edge of my brain and then further in, like something burrowing. Like a blood vessel bursting. My jaw tries to clench but I catch it in time. The plastic bite guard case rattles in my pocket, reminding me that it's there, of the one last thing I have to do before I get to the door.

I paid two hundred euros for this thing, I realize as I stare at the green plastic case. I shake it, a child trying to guess what's inside a wrapped gift, and wonder just when I decided that I would rather put this in my mouth than—huh.

I never see it land in the water. For all I know it could have slipped through a rift in time and space and still be sailing into the void. That doesn't seem to matter now.

He's already at the open door, waiting when I walk up the gangplank. One hand on the doorway, one holding a tea towel that he tosses over his shoulder. He doesn't invite me in, but he doesn't look surprised.

 _I'm making polenta,_ he says. _You hungry?_

 _Duncan,_ I say, _this can't keep happening._

His mouth makes that cupid bow gone bad, warped wood and danger, his smile that thing I don't understand because it knows more than I do and that shouldn't be possible.

 _No,_ he says finally, _no, it can't._

And one of those hands reaches out to grasp my jacket by the lapel. The fingers skid on the wet material, then down past the front, not bothering to press the keypad buttons, since access has already been granted. His fingers almost dive into the lining, to the pocket that he knows is there, and then he tugs, and I fall into him, just a little, just enough.

And then he kisses me on the mouth. Somewhere over his shoulder, for a split second, I can see the crack of sun slip behind the line of the water's edge.

 _Et quoique tu fasses  
L'amour est partout où tu regardes  
Dans les moindres recoins de l'espace  
Dans le moindre rêve où tu t'attardes  
L'amour comme s'il en pleuvait  
Nu sur les galets_ (Frances Cabrel, Je t'aimais, je t'aime et je t'aimerai )

[And no matter what you do  
Love is everywhere you look  
In the most hidden recesses of space  
In the smallest dream in which you linger  
Love falling as gentle rain  
naked on the sea-washed pebbles.] (I loved you, I love you, and I will (always) love you)

END


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